Posted
by
timothy
on Monday February 04, 2013 @09:01AM
from the not-a-drone-so-20th-century dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Iran has unveiled a new home-made combat aircraft, which officials say can evade radar. The single-seat Qaher F313 (Dominant F313) is the latest design produced by Iran's military since it launched the Azarakhsh (Lightning), in 2007. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad said it had 'almost all the positive features' of the world's most sophisticated jets.Footage from state TV showed the jet in flight, but not its take-off or landing."

It's possible that that is simply a mock-up they used for the cameras. This is pretty common amongst western countries so Iran could be the same. And Iran is spending a fair chunk of cash on science and technology. Plus they have had some access to Russian technology so that should give them a decent leg-up.

I'm not willing to commit to saying this is legit, but I'm reluctant to dismiss it out of hand as well.

The most telling part is the shell of the cockpit. Look at the walls... it's clearly fiberglass and only about 1/8" thick. I doubt that would withstand any reasonable airspeed at all. Look behind the seat... more fiberglass. Then there's the even more obvious... where do you put your legs?!? The switches and knobs on the right-side are almost totally obscured by the fiberglass overhang. How would you get to them? And then... the funniest part... all the writing I see is in English... lol

You'd be surprised at stuff you see stuck in early prototype cockpits. They used to shove production CRT TVs to showcase early versions of multifunctional displays in military prototyping. Because just making a TFT panel back then cost huge amounts to make a couple for every prototype. Then production stuff carried TFTs.

Regardless, this thing is obvious vaporware aimed at internal propaganda, just like the rest of Iran's fighter jet programs. But cockpit mockup and usage of everyday crap in it isn't the telling part. It's the build of the thing, like ridiculously small engine intakes or radome that couldn't fit any modern military jet radar. Cockpit could actually be a real prototype (though doubtful).

It used to be common for aircraft prototypes to carry no radar at all. Even as recently as the SEPECAT Jaguar [wikipedia.org] some production lightweight fighters came without on board radar. I assume this is just a full scale mockup. The radar Iran probably have available would come from the F-5 so it would be small enough to fit on such a small plane.

Given the present state of Iran's economy they have found themselves to be relying on lightweight fighters. The problem is they cannot manufacture either engines or radar

It's a mock up. Do you seriously think that early tech prototypes designed to showcase potential cockpits are made of production hardware and materials anywhere?

Some questions/thoughts that to me show it is a mock/fake/whatever:
1. Where are the rudder pedals? In the BBC video the pilot's legs were clearly bent with his knees pointing up in the air. That means his feet were pretty much flat on the cockpit floor and I didn't see rudder pedals there. Maybe the edge of one in the cockpit photo here [imgur.com].
2. Again back to the knees- with his knees up in the air like that his legs are clearly blocking access to the two front panels on the left and right. The pilot couldn

FYI most of the early prototyping of aircraft involves messing around with small scale drones shaped like various prototypes of the fighter. This is likely one such prototype.

Same goes for cockpit mockups. Some are used to demonstrate instruments and largely forego controls. This is useful when testing things like layout of instruments when shifting from one type of instruments to another (analogue dedicated instruments to digital MFDs for example).

Even more like the Sky Arrow. The Sky Arrow is carbon fiber/epoxy including the prop, so it is fairly stealthy as rental planes go*. It can be flown by sitting in it and it has been made in a drone version used as a FLIR observation platform.
*the metal engine would still show up to some extent, but the RCS is more like a big fat goose than a metal airplane.

Actually there's a very good reason for that. I used to work with a guy who was in the Iranian Air Force (he was granted asylum in the U.S.). He once told me that pilots/maintenance workers/etc were required to take English classes so they could read the training materials to fly and support the fighters we gave them. So they would be accustomed to reading English when dealing with fighters. If your brain has already been conditioned in "English mode" when operating/servicing a fighter, it's probably best to stick with it. The Soviets also gave them MiGs, so I'm sure they (or some of them) probably had to learn Russian, too.

The USAF will not certify manuals and tech orders written in any language other than English. So, if country X buys USAF stuff, and they want to translate it in to whatever the native language is, they assume full responsibility for the maintenance, care, and feeding of said equipment. Most countries find: A) It's really expensive to translate hundreds of thousands of pages of very technical data; B) English is the international language of aviation; C) As updates, modifications, operating supplements, emergency supplements, Time Compliance Technical Orders, upgrades, revisions, corrections, etc are published it means constantly paying for translation services over the life of the aircraft (unless the country opts out of the Technical Coordination Group and elects full responsibility for all safety, maintenance, inspections, repair procedures, etc). So, it's just cheaper to keep everything in English.

Be honest because honesty leads to goodness, and goodness leads to Paradise. Beware of falsehood because it leads to immorality, and immorality leads to Hell.

Generally speaking, claiming oneself to be a believer in Islam while being an obsessive liar is a bit of a problem. I guess politicians have their own way of redefining whatever "religion" they associate with... And, before anyone chimes in with the obvious, the below doesn't really apply because Iran is not Microsoft. They don't need Microsoft-style made-up plane FUD for any reason -- most readily because no one who is ostensibly the target of such fairy tales ("westerners") would take them on face value.

claiming oneself to be a believer in Islam while being an obsessive liar is a bit of a problem.

Explain to me how anyone who seriously claims to follow any organized religion is anything but an obsessive liar. They believe in a bunch of (mostly) made up stories that they by definition cannot prove to have any basis in fact. Hence they are liars at a minimum to themselves and quite probably to others. Making up stories shows no incompatibility with politics whatsoever.

The proper term for it in those cases is confabulation [wikipedia.org] which is sometimes referred to as an "honest lie". There may be no intent to deceive but the person is making up a story that they cannot support with objectively verifiable facts. When you don't know an answer to a question and you make up an "answer", you are confabulating. Confabulation is considered a form of lying [wikipedia.org].

Are you just trying to tell yourself you aren't a liar because you believe in the unprovable, i.e., there is no god.

Doubting something unproven is not lying, merely prudence. While based on the lack of evidence I am dubious that there is a god my answer is simply that there is not sufficient evidence to reasonably believe in a god as described in the judeo/christian or islamic traditions. In fact what evidence I do have actually seems to indicated against rather than for the existence of such an entity. While I cannot rule out the possibility that one exists I am unwilling to confabulate a story to try to describe suc

Depends. If you are talking about the christian/jewish/islamic style god I might be considered some form of an atheist. All available evidence suggests it is a bunch of made up fables and I really don't see myself changing my mind about that. I think their stories are absurd, illogical, incoherent and inconsistent. I consider it just as likely as the existence of Zeus or Odin or the Flying Spaghetti Monster and I've never seen evidence that would make me think otherwise. More generally I regard unprove

I do not appreciate your implication that I am ignorant or your apparent claim to know something I do not without any substantiation of that claim. You really know almost nothing about me so I find that statement quite insulting and condescending.

Anyways, please don't confuse 'all available evidence' with the 'evidence' you are aware of.

If you have evidence I am not aware of then by all means present it. But I'm rather confident you have no such thing and are merely engaging in puffery.

Wow, so you're that rare individual who has recreated every scientific experiment that's been done right?

Nice little strawman argument you have there. Pity I have to demolish it. There is a HUGE difference between accepting someone saying that something is true when I have ways of objectively evaluating the evidence and accepting an claim that by definition cannot be proven. The important part is that I have the option to examine the evidence for a scientific hypothesis whether I chose to or not. There is no evidence to examine for a religion. If you don't understand the difference then you really don't b

The difference is only in your mind. Religion is individual personal spiritual experiences turned into dogma. Science is the same with individual experiments.

The evidence to examine is spiritual experiences. Thankfully, there was a whole culture(openly, many secret societies of course) of people investigating this and they came up with processes and techniques to follow that if done properly lead to exactly the same results across individuals. Just because you aren't aware of this does not mean it doesn

Just because people accept a particular church's dogma doesn't mean there is any truth or objectivity behind that dogma. It is easily demonstrable that many dogmas of religious institutions are incompatible with those of others. By simple logic they cannot all be correct. People are not accepting "personal experiences", they are accepting stories made up by others which cannot be independently verified. Religious dogma for christianity was established over a thousand years ago. It cannot be affected by

While this doesn't so much apply here since the intended audience is first and foremost the Persians themselves who are mostly ululating Muslims, but the Quran does say [thereligionofpeace.com] in various forms that you can and should lie to infidels especially if it conceals the weakness of the faithful or allows them to gain advantage over the infidels.

built with "advanced materials" and to have a very low radar signature

So all we really know for certain is its not the "Spruce Goose". Well that's not saying much.

can evade radar

Yeah so can the Cessna 172 I trained in. Now doing it well, and doing it easily, and being optimized for that task, that's a whole nother topic.

Perhaps a little overly ambitious. For people who know nothing about aerospace the best I can do is a standardized slashdot car analogy: This is like Henry Ford hand building his first model T engineering demonstrator but declaring he's going to skip a couple steps and start shipping Tesla model S RSN.

Cessna 172 has a huge radar cross section. Those wing mounts and engine are shiners. You're talking about flying under radar horizon, which is not stealthy as any modern fighter is equipped with look down-shoot down radar which will find you and light you up like a christmas tree in a matter of seconds of entering its range.

Seems to me there's a difference between "evade radar" and "doesn't show up on radar". I think of evading as active - in this case, flying in such a way as to avoid the actual radio waves whereas "doesn't show up on radar" is more about minimizing cross section, radar-absorbing paint, etc - passive methods.

Doesn't matter. Lets play jeopardy, what model aircraft landed in Red Square on May 28, 1987? As a kid getting into aviation at that time, I got lectured by numerous relatives just to make sure I didn't get any ideas by that story... Yes yes I know that despite the legends of sneaking in, he got detected multiple times, but no one could agree what to do about him, so they logged it, did nothing, and eventually lots of bosses heads rolled (you can tell this happened in the USSR, in the USA we'd have given

That's what made is a successful social engineering hack. AKA CIA involvement. Which I'm still sort of inclined to believe.

Lets say you want to get most of the heads of the USSR airforce out of the way or fired or sent to the Gulag because they won't play along in a blackmail deal or whatever.

Solution? Send a kid in a Cessna to land in Red Square. Insta-fired. If they shoot the kid down they're fired because he's just a crazy teen in a civilian GA aircraft, if they don't shoot him down they're fired be

So it's safe to assume that this is just to convince the Iranian citizens that Iran has the military might to back up it's bluster? "Yeah, we could totally take the Americans and Israelis in a fight. Their technology may seem formidable, prompting you to question why we're trying to build a nuke and are always threatening them, but it's not tough. Look! Stealth jets! Just came up with this over the weekend! We're all good. Don't question the state, we know what we are doing, and would not throw away your lives in a war we can't possibly win."

(Note that I'm not saying that the US and Israel are morally right just because we happen to have stronger military forces. I wish both sides acted responsibly and had far fewer weapons.)

David Cenciotti noted that the plane featured “implausible aerodynamics and Hollywood sheen” and was laughably small for a fighter jet. He also commented thatthe cockpit was far too basic for a sophisticated aircraft, and appeared “similar to those equipping small private planes.... The nose section is so small almost no radar could fit in it... The air intakes are extremely small, whereas the engine section lacks any kind of nozzle: engine afterburners could melt the entire jet.... It looks like this pilot is in a miniature plane” and it appeared “nothing more than a large mock-up model.” Iran also broadcast video footage of the Qaher F-313 in flight, which Cenciotti said appeared to fly like a “radio-controlled scale model more than a modern fighter jet.” He also noted it was suspect that Tehran did not release takeoff and landing footage of its new aircraft.

Pretty much all of Iran's "own fighters" have been vaporware so far. This is pretty well known. They cannot really make anything of their own with all the crippling sanctions that isn't overly cheap knockoff.

That said, it doesn't mean that they can't test new stuff. Most planes start off as drones and eventually move to production. Most of the Russian and various Western jets that jumped up in generation had severe teething problems of their own (F-22 and F-35 make great examples here), and those nations actually have great expertise in designing these planes, not to mention economies that can support huge development costs associated with these programs. Iran lacks all of these.

Iran could, and likely is working on something. It's highly unlikely to be practical and working fighter jet, just like all of its previous fighter jets. Beyond the propaganda bullshit, it shows that with all the sanctions, they still have some degree of expertise and skill and every once in a while they have to show off something like this. Something that will never become a practical application, but to show that they still have some semblance of capability of making a high tech device.

And then they sell their anti ship missiles that cost next to nothing and manage to cripple a high tech Israeli ship. Or have a NATO general win war games using nothing but their low quality, but cheap and numerous hardware against significantly more technologically advanced NATO forces.

David Cenciotti noted that the plane featured “implausible aerodynamics and Hollywood sheen” and was laughably small for a fighter jet. He also commented thatthe cockpit was far too basic for a sophisticated aircraft, and appeared “similar to those equipping small private planes.... The nose section is so small almost no radar could fit in it... The air intakes are extremely small, whereas the engine section lacks any kind of nozzle: engine afterburners could melt the entire jet.... It looks like this pilot is in a miniature plane” and it appeared “nothing more than a large mock-up model.” Iran also broadcast video footage of the Qaher F-313 in flight, which Cenciotti said appeared to fly like a “radio-controlled scale model more than a modern fighter jet.” He also noted it was suspect that Tehran did not release takeoff and landing footage of its new aircraft.

I'm not saying the jet is real, but releasing takeoff and landing footage would give away some secret technical information about the aircraft. If you wanted to keep that information secret, not releasing the footage would be a good idea. For example- a video of a takeoff could be used to calculate minimum takeoff speed, thrust to weight ratio, etc. Probably more. A landing video might contain useful information also. For a country which is basically hostile to every other country in the world, keeping

I keep waiting for the day when Iran will claim to have invented a next-generation satellite dish that does not require line of sight to a satellite, works underground, and remarkably only receives state-approved channels. Upon inspection we will find it is a large plastic Tupperware bowl screwed onto a cable box, which in turn is hooked up to the local cable network.

I keep waiting for the day when Iran will claim to have invented a next-generation satellite dish that does not require line of sight to a satellite, works underground, and remarkably only receives state-approved channels. Upon inspection we will find it is a large plastic Tupperware bowl screwed onto a cable box, which in turn is hooked up to the local cable network.

See, that actually sounds much more like something North Korea would do, except for the whole "cable boxes won't work without power" thing....ahh hell, that wouldn't stop them.

Reminds me of a "personal sport jet" Burt Rutan designed, can't remember the name of it. It was available in kit form and cost about $150k in mid-'90s dollars to build IIRC. It wasn't a canard design but was about the same size and had the same bubbly cute look.

Looks like a lot of fun, but good luck carrying any meaningful number of missiles on that thing, or fuel for that matter - another big limitation Rutan's personal sport jet shared IIRC.

If you would like to test your new jet please feel free to fly it out to one of carriers. We will be more than happy to have the best radars made test its' stealthiness. We will also test its' combat effectiveness.
Signed
Commander, US 5th Fleet
Manama, Bahrain

I'm suprised at all the irrational hatred and derision on this site towards Iran. It's almost cosmically funny that most of the posts are about Iran's stupid attempts at propaganda when all the hatred and derision comes from US propaganda.

They're new to the world domination business, and clearly still wet behind the ears. When you're a legitimate world power, you are supposed to issue press releases and hold press conferences denying that you have a stealth aircraft or other advanced weaponry. Say it over and over again, pound your fist on the podium, go to the United Nations, and repeat "we do not possess any of the stealth fighters that have been spotted taking off and landing at Iranian air bases." Have your state media publish front p

Kinda odd that they don't manufacture aircraft until now and then suddenly construct an aircraft that put's China's to shame. Somehow I doubt they built something so advanced and compact when obviously there is only one country in the world who could make something like that... Japan, and last I heard they were still out of the fighter aircraft construction game.;)